Intel Corp. (INTC) may have scored a key win in the tablet market. According to reports by Venture Beat, Reuters, and other sources Samsung Electronics Comp., Ltd. (KSC:005930) has selected an Atom system-on-a-chip to power its next generation flagship Android tablet, the Galaxy Tab 3. Given that Samsung is currently in second place in tablet sales (with a little over a sixth of the total market), this could be huge to Intel establishing a beachhead in a market space that's currently dominated by the partners of Intel's mobile arch-rival ARM Holdings Plc (LON:ARM).

Samsung first experiment with Intel Atom chips in its Ativ tablet line, which packed Intel's dual-core Atom Z2760 processors and Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT) Windows 8. However, its Ativ line has failed to achieve the sales of its Galaxy tablet line.

The sources report that Samsung will opt for a Clover Trail+ chipset and 32 nm Cloverview processor core design, rather than wait around for its upcoming 22 nm design (core: Silvermont; SoC: ValleyView; chipset: Bay Trail). The dual-core chip will reportedly be clocked between 800 MHz and 1600 MHz.

Reuters' source indicates the 10.1-inch Galaxy Tab 3 model will get the Intel chip -- it is unclear whether the 7-inch model will also get Atom treatment. IBTimes reports that some variants of the third-generation tablet family may feature Samsung's 32 nm Exynos 5000 series chips or NVIDIA's Tegra 4.

The Galaxy Tab 2's successor will reportedly pack an Intel processor.

One disappointment is that the tablet will reportedly feature a pretty low resolution display -- 1280x800 pixel panels -- slightly more than Apple, Inc.'s (AAPL) iPad Mini, which packs a 1024x768 pixel display, but less than the fourth generation iPad, which has a 2,048x1,536 pixel.

I thoguht it a little funny that the article compared the low red of their device with the much higher res of an apple device despite samsung thenmselves making a device of the same size with a res higher than the apple res.

Seems a lot more relevant to me to mention that it is substantially lower than their nexus 10 than it being substantially lower than the ipad.